The RBGE Herbarium: Exploring Gesneriaceae, the African violet family

The RBGE Herbarium: Exploring Gesneriaceae, the African violet family has allowed volunteers to be part of opening up global biodiversity research possibilities by releasing the data held in 300 years of plant specimens. The project was led by Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

This page provides access to the document images for The RBGE Herbarium and to the data transcribed by project volunteers. We are hugely grateful to everyone who contributed.

Project data

Project record

Download screenshots of guidance given to volunteers as zip or tar.xz.

Watch videos demonstrating the project by clicking here.

Many of these videos also demonstrate subject set selection and subject filtering in the index. Volunteers could sort and filter the subject index by any of the headings.

Pop-ups were displayed for completed subjects. These videos were recorded after the project had completed, so you will see rather more of these pop-ups than a volunteer would have.

Completed subject sets were greyed out in the subject set index. Again, because these videos were recorded after the project had completed, most subject sets are greyed out.

Geography (Cultivated: No)

Demonstrates the Geography workflow for an uncultivated specimen.

Geography (Cultivated: Yes)

Demonstrates the Geography workflow for a cultivated specimen.

Geography (Cultivated: Not Sure)

Demonstrates the Geography workflow for a specimen with incomplete information.

Latitude (Not present and in degrees)

Demonstrates the Latitude workflow for two specimens with no latitude/longitude information, and for a specimen with latitude/longitude given in degrees and minutes.

Latitude (Decimal)

Demonstrates the Latitude workflow for a specimen with latitude/longitude given in decimal format.

Paging

Demonstrates the paging feature that was introduced for this project, allowing volunteers to page backwards and forwards through related records.

Information on reuse

The images used in The RBGE Herbarium are licensed according to the CC BY 4.0 licence. This licence allows people to freely use images as long as they give appropriate credit and indicate if any changes have been made.

The data transcribed by volunteers is licensed according to the CC0 licence. This licence means there are no copyright restrictions on this data and it can be freely reused.

Citation information

Any use of the images or data from The RBGE Herbarium should credit 'Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh' as the source.

Data removal

To request removal of data contributed by or pertaining to you, please contact research@nationalarchives.gov.uk.